Global trade contracted quickly and severely during the global crisis. This paper uses a unique dataset of French firms to match export data to firm-level credit constraints and shows that most of the 2008–2009 trade collapse was due to the unprecedented demand shock and to product...

This paper estimates the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on import protection policies over 1988:Q1–2010:Q4 for five industrialized economies — the United States, European Union, Australia, Canada and South Korea. We find evidence of a strong countercyclical trade policy response in the...